Denver and the West

Life term in boy's starvation

Guardians both headed for prison cells

Defense lawyer Darren Cantor consults with defendant Jon Phillips just before the jury's verdict was read in court Tuesday. Found guilty of first-degree murder, Phillips was sentenced to life without parole.
( Kathryn Scott Osler, The Denver Post
)

As Denver District Courtroom 17 emptied Tuesday afternoon, only one question remained unanswered: Why?

"I don't know. It just doesn't make sense to reasonable people," said Deputy District Attorney David Lamb, who successfully prosecuted Jon Phillips for first-degree murder in the starvation death of 7-year-old Chandler Grafner. "Maybe the dynamics between Phillips and (his girlfriend) Sarah Berry prevented them from stopping each other.

"I don't know what was going on with Jon Phillips. I guess by now he has turned off a lot of things in his mind."

After more than two weeks of testimony, the jury took only three hours of deliberation to convict Phillips of routinely denying Chandler food over four weeks until the child died.

Child Abuse?

Browse a gallery of images from the trial of Jon Phillips in the death of Chandler Grafner.

Read the full child fatality review, produced by the Colorado Dept. of Human Services, about Chandler Grafner's death.

Phillips, 27, was immediately sentenced, and he sat expressionless as Judge John Madden IV sent him to prison for the rest of his life without chance of parole.

Madden added the maximum sentence of 48 years, to be served consecutively, for Phillips' conviction on the count of child abuse resulting in death.

Phillips received an additional one-year sentence for tampering with evidence for trying to clean his apartment before paramedics arrived to resuscitate Chandler.

On Monday evening, co-defendant Berry, 23, was only hours away from starting her trial on the same charges when she accepted an offer from the DA's office to plead guilty to second-degree murder in exchange for a 48-year sentence.

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With good behavior, she can expect to serve about 32 years.

Defense attorneys Darren Cantor and David Jones said Phillips was never offered a deal to plead guilty.

Prosecutor Verna Carpenter, the mother of two children including a 7-year-old boy, composed herself and pleaded for the community "to care about our children, to look for the bruises, to look for the hints" of child abuse.

"Denver desperately needs good foster homes. Our social services is very flawed, primarily from a lack of funding. We see this in our office every day," Carpenter said.

Phillips' parents, Tim and Christine Phillips, merely hugged each other and cried as Madden handed down their son's life sentence. Phillips' brother, David, and his wife cried.

Jon Phillips, who has never publicly explained his or Berry's actions and did not take the stand in his defense, was not Chandler's father. He had no legal obligation to become a guardian for Chandler, the son of a former girlfriend and another man, and the half-brother of Phillips' son Dominick.

But he and Berry took the boy in. Then they starved him to death.

Chandler's mother, Christina Grafner, who lost custody of Chandler to Phillips and Berry after she was charged with neglect, was "incapacitated" and unable to attend the trial, according to her sister, Stefanie Evilsizer. Grafner's mother, Sandra Younger, Chandler's maternal grandmother, said Christina was "in a hospital."

Through their attorney, Grafner and Chandler's biological father, Josh Norris, who attended the trial and sentencing, released a statement thanking the prosecutors.

"We continue to grieve the loss of our little boy. Chandler will never be forgotten," the statement read.

Younger, the maternal grandmother, said Chandler was taken from her by Jefferson County social service workers in May 2006, and they never allowed her to see him again. Chandler died a year later. She called Phillips "a monster" before he was sentenced, and she later called him "a sociopath without a conscience."

She said she agreed "absolutely" with co-defendant Berry's pleading guilty to second-degree murder.

"She manned up and took responsibility," Younger said.

Prosecutor Lamb said Berry's plea saved the 6-year-old half-brother, Dominick Phillips, from having to testify again and would prevent Chandler's family from having to endure another trial.

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